Your choices changes the GENRE of the story! Almost EVERY NPC LIES to you at some point in the game! Live a life of adventure or a normal life! A game with true choices! An interactive story/game where you play the role of Ryou, a seemingly normal high school student in the land of Sorayama.

About This Game

Your choices changes the GENRE of the story!

Almost EVERY NPC LIES to you at some point in the game!

Live a life of adventure or a normal life! A game with true choices!

An interactive story/game where you play the role of Ryou, a seemingly normal high school student in the land of Sorayama. Solve the mysteries that surround him while maintaining his friendships and saving Claire. Remain ignorant of the secrets and live a normal life or choose to learn the truth. Be careful where you put your priorities for it may prove fatal.

Multiple end-game climaxes and endings!

What will be the final conflict?

Take control of your story or be swept away by it unlike ever before!

True choices! (Defined as choosing your own goal!)

Daily Life Sim! Player-Led Game/Story Genre Shifting!

Everyday choose what YOU want to do. Fight monsters in the forest on Monday. Hang out with friends on Tuesday. The player gets to choose!

Player-Active Storytelling! NPCs tries to manipulate you, the player!

This is what makes gamers like this game when they don't like Visual Novels and/or Dating Sims. Normally what you get is a storyline that you can sit back and just passively absorb. In Fading Hearts...

Players can actively manipulate story mechanics once they understand how they work.

Also there are many people trying to convince you to do things that may or may not be in your best interest. How do you figure out who to trust and not trust? Will you get enough information in time or would you have go with your gut feeling when it comes does down to the wire?

The fact that you can be on multiple tracks at once, and the endings contradict each other is pretty upsetting. So if you're on a track for a good ending with one of the girls, it is entirely possible at the last minute for your girlfriend to not speak to you for 3 weeks while another ending plays out, and for her to totally forget you guys were even going out, and for the game to tell you that you are in love with someone you haven't spoken to since the intro. There are endings where you start a relationship with a girl.....who you have already been in a relationship with since March. There are endings that contradict you discovering someone's "secret identity" and tell you that you have no idea who they are. I swear, the game is great up until the endings but a VN that doesn't give you closure is like a horror game with bloom effects. Completely playable but you constantly ask yourself "why?"

I havent finish all the endings of this game,but so far this game been awesome.The Intro of the game hooked us from the start,I would like to say that the author did a good job of writing an intro and this is not juz a crappy reading story all the time,you got to actually make choices of what your character want to say.The Gameplay is bit bad but the endings is the main part that make this game great,There are several endings like Sad,happy, and Glitched. This game is recommended to the people who are Emotional...

Sorry For Bad English but I tried my best to explain. hope you find this review useful.

Played this game before it came to Steam and love it through and through!

There are visual novels with longer and deeper storylines, but Fading Heart managed to be more enjoyable than most of them; its characters are downright endearing, and the story is interesting with its share of twists and mysteries.

Among things that makes Fading Hearts favorably stand out among other VNs is that it gives you a lot of actual choice, rather then deciding the route for you based on often- unobvious dialogue choice. For instance, most VNs require the player to focus on pursuing specific girl, often at expense of being cold or downright rude to other girls to avoid getting unwanted “points” with them. Fading Hearts recognizes that being nice to a girl doesn’t mean you are romantically interested in her, and ultimately places decision of who to pursue into your hands. It encourages supporting all your friends regardless of your romantic interest, which I find a refreshing change from many other VNs.

Not to say that the plot can’t force something upon you, it sure can. But even when the choice is taken from you, it is the result of what you choose earlier – choose poorly!

To sum it up, I fully recommend Fading Hearts to everyone who enjoys VNs. And for people not familiar with the genre, I’d say it is a good choice of the first VN if they want to try them out.

Before Fading Hearts i've played TONS of Visual Novels and Dating Sims. I knew nothing about Fading Hearts before I decided to pick it up not knowing what to expect. From the main store page it seemed interesting enough for the $10 I paid for it. I have to say, I was quite dissapointed to be frank.

First I'm going to go over what I liked about the game. The gameplay was really interesting and fun, definitely felt more closer towards a Dating sim. You get stats you can raise by doing various activities throughout the day and the stats (usually) have some effect on the game, such as how much money you get and beating certain monsters in the forest. There is a combat system, though not very in-depth, was entertaining for the first few times. And the game strongly encourages and is ment to be played with multiple playthroughs for all the endings, even including some cute dialouge at the end of each playthrough that provide hints on what to do on your next one.

One thing that interested me into buying the game was the "Player-Active Storytelling! NPCs tries to manipulate you, the player!" feature on the store page. I seriously did not feel this at all, in any of the playthroughs. I felt fully in control the entire time as with every dialogue option you can easily see what the consequences were and what path you were going to go down. The "Players can actively manipulate story mechanics once they understand how they work." was just a fancy way of saying choose A or B like you do in any other game/VN, nothing intuitive there.

You get stats and other progress bars that you can raise that can influence your money income, and combat stats. It had very good potentional to be very good but in the end it was pointless. You honestly don't need money that much, the only time you really would need to spend money is on things to obtain even more money. You don't need to touch the system at all and can do very well without, theres no real benefit it was a waste of time. You can also choose to do various excercises and train magic spells as well for combat. However, to reach the ending that relied a bit on combat you didn't need to be very strong at all. Once you hit a certain threshold (which isn't very high) it was pointless and a waste of time. It would've been nice if they added something that required or rewarded spending more time on raising those stats.

However, the thing that bothered me the most, is that the story was absolutely terrible. I definitely felt like it was more gameplay oriented storytelling than an actual story. Of course the story changes with your actions (as expected with multiple endings and such) but each time I was never satisfied. The climaxes to each ending felt very bland, and the actual endings were extremely cliche and predictable. The characters are REALLY flat and I'm not talking about their chests. They have little personality and no development whatsoever. Side characters are pretty irrelevant and you only speak to certain ones to obtain endings.

Lastly, the game is super short. I spent about 15 hours on the game but really thats because I left the game on while I fell asleep. Each playthrough is about 30mins-1hour long at most. If it takes longer, thats because you're trying to figure out what to do to get the other endings which won't take long. You can probably get all the endings in one sitting if you wanted.

The game had a lot of potential but I felt like it was released a bit too soon or the writing could've been better. The idea and design was good but it had no depth whatsoever.

Literally the best game I have played in my life. It left me on an emotional journey and at 9 o'clock on a Friday night, feeling so saddened. While I sat alone by my computer, I realised I had given love to two fictional characters while I sat here with no one. Their love was not mine, but I had it for a brief moment. In the course of giving up my life, i gave two others love for awhile.

If you want to feel loved, buy this game. It will leave you feeling lonely but loved as you finish the game. You may have no one, but at least you let two others have love. For that lonely Friday night - I felt loved. And I never want that feeling to depart, so i just keep playing again and again, as if I'm watching my ex living out her life without me, when all I want is her back.

This game does a good job of making the player develop feelings towards the characters, and giving you the freedom to choose how you want to build your friendship/relationships with them. Though to get the full experience, you might have to play it multiple times. The choices you make in this game do affect the vast number of events that happen in the game. Though I feel like the writing and directing could've used a bit more work, because towards the end everything happened way too quickly and was very anticlimactic, which left me disappointed and a bit depressed.

If you have patience for lots of reading, drama, and romance, this game is well worth your time.

Its cute, interesting and fun, I enjoyed it so much I had to call in sick the next day since I was captured with getting to see all the beautiful endings!

It gets a 9/10 from me, it got alittle repetative (especially work part aka read book, work some, read book, work more, work more, work more etc several days in a row) also the music was nice making the game far more enjoyable especially with the lack of VA.

It's a Life/Dating sim with an interesting story and cute characters. If you're into games where you have to manage stats and you try to get the girl - then you'll like this game. No, it doesn't have nudity and it doesn't need too. This is more of a tragic romance, where you'll end up learning more about each character and really falling in love with them. This could easily have been spun out into a short novel, that's how good the storytelling is.

It's short, you can probably finish a playthrough in a couple of hours, but it has some replayability. This is an Indie company, so while $14.99 might seem like a lot, it's not if you just think of it like going to a movie. A movie is a few hours, ticket prices are nearly that much and you still enjoy that. At least with this game, you own it and can re-visit it if you like. Definite buy IF you like anime-style characters, tragic/heroic romances and life/dating sims.

Difficult to recommend for anyone other than big fans of the visual novel genre, and I deliberated on whether or not this was worth recommending. Leaning for no. If you're a fan of VNs (like me), this game will be worth your time; otherwise, I would look elsewhere.

The game promises you the ability to change the genre of the story, but the consequence of that is that too many different plot elements all seem to merge together into some kind of overwhelming mass, making the first playthrough very daunting. For all the directions the game can take, they don't see particularly refined. The result is a rather schizophrenic experience that can leave various threads unresolved, even with subsequent playthroughs. This game DOES improve with replays, and there are definitely elements of the story I really like (especially concerning Alex and Rina), but it requires significant investment to dig that up.

The stat-raising element of the game also disrupts the pacing of the game significantly. I found that I was grinding up knowledge or stats quite a bit in anticipation of something, anything to happen. The plot takes a backseat to however you intend to break it, and it doesn't really flow. This makes replays something of a chore, and the UI isn't well suited for that.

This is the first product of Sakura River and it offers a lot of potential for where they're going. I look forward to seeing more of what they produce in the future.

Whelp, I've played my share of VNs, good and bad. I had doubts about this one, everyone speaks proper to the point of seeming unrealistic, for example... But then came a fantastic double-sided conversation that explained some of the games mechanics to the player while SIMULTANEOUSLY being hypothetical advice to the main character. Fantastic.

Actually quite good. I have played quite a few VN's and they all follow a similar pattern. This one does something different with your personal strength stat and randomization with key plot points. Which means you can play it the same way twice and end up with different endings.

The Characters are better than your stereotypical "ignorant of others feelings" protagonist and the decisions you need to make are pretty tough.

The only bad I noticed was that mid/late game there were hardly any events happening and it felt like one of those repetitive dating sims. It could be that I had just unlocked a lot of events early in the game through sheer luck and ran out of them but it's worth mentioning.

It can be short... but so are the other VN's available on Steam. Replayability is high and that should make up for it a little.

Alright. I played the game, beat it and even enjoyed it, honestly. However:

The art style is pretty dated for what it is and felt pretty simple. It was pretty, but I've played a number of VN's thatwere much prettier. 6/10

The story had moments that were touching and was overall very relatable for the most part. It was also rather simplistic and carried almost no twists or surprises. There was *one* thing that I guessed incorrectly about at the very end. Don't mistake this as being impressive, since the game only has 5 4 characters that you, the main character ever interacts with.So it being easily predictable is pretty much a given. 4/10

Music is alright at first, it's gets rather monotonous since there is very little change or variety. I never reached the point where I hated it, but it didn't exactly add much to the game at all, either. 5/10

The gameplay elements are also pretty simple. Money quickly ceases being a concern with just a little fore-thinking and the right plan. At the end, you are still chided for "not having enough, and maybe needing to work on that" by the game though. Despite the fact that I could have bought every ingame asset with money to spare.

Combat is sort of interesting. There are only something like 5 or 6 monster types though, so you will cycle through them all very quickly. They just get stronger over time as you lvl up etc. With a little work, you are also essentially invincible, so it's just a matter of wearing them down from your overly abundant, easily *re-fueled magic reserves. So, stupidly easy. 4/10

I enjoyed the game for the most part. I beat it with very little effort and it only took as long as it did because I deleted my first play through due to the common black screen problems. Reinstalling fixed nothing. Thankfully they are not widespread and don't harm the game overly much.

Overall, Fading Hearts is a 5/10 for me. I can't in good conscience suggest it to people. If you find a sale where it's $5 or less, consider maybe buying it. Your time would be better spent with the plethora of freely translated VN's you can find elsewhere. Much better spent.

This game was endearing and amusing. It's complicated enough to need to replay it a few times, short enough to replay without a major time commitment, and full enough to replay without getting bored. The twists and connections throughout the storylines are interesting, and surprisingly unexpected without being completely random.

Unfortunately the engine is a little broken, certain events aren't tied to flags, and therefore can be unlocked through illogical or unwanted means. The writing is also a little unprofessional at times, but that was easy enough to live with.

As the first project from this group I think is was wonderful and I look forward to seeing them grow through future releases!

It starts out OK, but it seems to me like it's very incomplete, like the story just skips a few chapters, picks up again, and leaves whoever's playing the game floundering. Characters don't develop so much as they suddenly jump from spot to spot on their arc, with no progression, they're just suddenly there, and some parts(specifically anything involving receiving a text message) are just broken, and don't display at all. For all that there's supposed to be conversation trees, there is almost no choice when it comes to actual conversations. Also, while the RPG mechanics are interesting, they're also very incomplete, as you are lacking anything to indicate level progression.

RE: Developer responseThe storyline goes on with or without the player? I would have visited the characters in question every day if I had the option, but I wasn't given the option. Story arcs just plain vanish literally the next time I see the character in question. Also If you're going to have the story continue with or without the character, you really really REALLY need to reflect that in the in-game writing("What happened to him? Oh right, you weren't there. He got arrested/shot/broke up/won an award for community service/whatever"). Neither you, nor your character should know what happened off screen, so it's annoying when your character knows more about the story than you. I know it's just a game, but what kind of person can go a week without seeing a friend and not ask, "Hey, what's new with you?"

Jesus Christ, the best visual novel I've ever played, so good and so much replayablity. I've played through it three times already and only brought it the other day. It's amazingly written, the music is fantastic and I couldn't imagine many ways in which it could be better.

10/10 would buy a sequal... And a sequal to that sequal.

For anyone interested my first 3 endings were: The sunrise and sunset of happiness, Dazzling heart and Best friends forever. Good luck to anyone who plans to give it a play :3

This is a type of game that seems to have people that either really like it or just straight-up hate it. There's also a lot of curious people that want to know if the game is worth getting, so rather than just tell you "Oh yeah, I like this!" I'm going to list all of the various things a person may like or dislike about the game.

First of all, this is NOT a visual novel. This is a simulation game mixed with RPG elements. A visual novel is a game in which you only point and click to get story to continue. This is NOT that kind of game. It becomes a simulation game when there are stats to alter and daily choices to be made. It infuriates me that so many people called this a visual novel, when it's obviously a simulation game. Since you can go into a turn-based battle with HP & MP, level up, use a sword or magic, that's the part that's RPG-like. Although, I definitely wouldn't call this an RPG, since the battling is definitely not the focus of the game. In fact, you don't have to step foot in a battle if you don't want to. You can progress the story without participating in battle.

Is this a dating sim? I believe so. I've seen others argue that it isn't, but I would say *it is* mainly because the only good endings you can get require you to have a good romantic relationship with a girl. There are only two girls to choose from, by the way.

How's the storyline? The best word I'd give the storyline is that it's rather odd. This isn't to say that it's a bad storyline, but in all honesty, I find the plot to be a bit weird. I've only gotten 4 endings out of the possible 10, so the storyline could be explained more if I get more endings, but they don't seem to explain the "weirdness" of the storyline very well. For some people, this isn't a problem though.Otherwise, the story involves getting to know one of (or both) of the girls that the main character knows. There are also two optional characters one can interact with, but they're strictly platonic. The main goal of the story is to save Claire. Yes, Claire is one of the two girls you can be romantically involved with, but you must save her regardless of which girl you choose, otherwise you'll get a bad ending. Save her from what? That would be giving away spoilers.

How are the battles? Too easy, honestly. All one has to do is learn enough spells, and a person can very, very easily survive battles without much effort. In fact, you could learn ALL of the spells before even entering into your first battle, and you're pretty much guaranteed to win. As I mentioned earlier, there's HP, MP, basic attack (with a sword), and magic. It is turn-based, like any old-fashioned JRPG. There are times while in battle that certain mechanics of it don't make sense. For instance, if an enemy casts a shield on itself, it also casts a shield on the main character. I think this was a mistake in the game design, not intentional.

How long does one playthrough take? It's really only the first playthrough that should take a while. My first playthrough took about 5 or 6 hours. Of course, I read all of the dialogue. If you were to skip the dialogue, it would probably only take you an hour or two. If you're a fan of story (which I'm not sure why you wouldn't be if you're playing a game that's heavily focused on story), it's only long the first playthrough, because after that, you can skip any *already read* dialogue. There's also the option to skip all dialogue regardless of whether you've read it or not, but that seems like a rather silly thing to do.

Are there walkthroughs for this game? Yes, but the only ones I've ever found were incomplete. I suggest doing a Google search to find various walkthroughs if you really want tips on how to get through the game. Some walkthroughs have given false information though, so be careful about which ones you choose to follow. It's difficult to write a walkthrough for this game, because of the high randomization of events. Two different people playing the game could make the *exact* same choices, but end up experiencing events on different dates in the game. Basically, the games event mechanics are not set to specific dates. You, the gamer, have to trigger them yourself through either persistence or mere chance. What do I mean by "persistence"? For example, the forest where your battles can take place has certain events within it. If you want those events to happen more quickly, then you need to keep exploring it over and over again until it triggers. However, if you're a patient person, you could just wait for it to happen by chance by exploring the forest every once in a while or something. Each time you explore the forest, the game randomly generates either a battle, a personal daydream of the main character's, or an event. Battles are the most frequent. Thus, you can have about a dozen battles before ever randomly getting an event or you could simply "luck out" and get an event straight off.

Is there any "ecchi" or nudity? Nope. Not even a little bit.

I think I've covered all the stuff most people ask/wonder about this game. I hope it helps the curious/unsure people about whether or not to get the game.

this is my first review so if i had made any grammar mistakes please forgive me

the game was alright, not the best visual novel but it was good.

Pros: it had a good concept

has a good art

has wide varity of choice making decisions

i like the freedom they give players

they did a good job at blending genres together

and most of the story was good

cons: there was a few things i didnt like about the game though

Most of games mystery was a bit plain and sometimes it was very obvious

The rpg combat system was very generic and i would have liked it if they added little more animation

After you exceed the number your choices you have left from gathering information from Sophia and your future self , they leave as soon as you try to talk to them. it would have been a little more better if you could talk to your future self alot more about how he got stuck in time or maybe your future self could have gone crazy after being lost in time for so long and he might start misdirecting the player (maybe a boss fight could be included) . or maybe they could have added a route for Sophia and follow a different path.

^the phone system in the game has a similar problem. once you called have rina and claire enough times to hang out you will eventually run out of scripts and the call list will eventually be empty. it would have been better if you could call more people to hang out (for example you could probably call Alex to hang out at the arcade or maid cafe, or maybe call sophia to hang out and go somewhere, this could also work well with my idea of sophias route) or maybe they could add certain out going events (like a convention or a amusement parks) to keep rina and claire in the phone book.

there was also a few things that i didnt like about the storybut the one i mostly didnt like about it is:

Y2k bug orphans SERIOUSLY..... let me explain what the y2k bug is"In the beginning of computer era, many information systems stored dates as two-digit numbers - e.g. 12/22/99. That practice continued to a large extent throughout 1980s and 1990s". however when the year 2000 came along many types of data information wasnt made correctly to change the date into the year 2000 because the data relied in 2 digit numbers. so at around that time instead of the system saying its 1/1/2000 it would actully say the date is 1/1/1900. this bug lead to errors in systems, incorrect information and other mechanical and software faults.

so back to the game.......Why would they make the main characters back story about the y2k bug like it was some sort of sickness was spreading around that time, if i was the developers i would have choosen something different like "our parents died in a car crash" or "there was a sickness growing and our parents didnt make it".

overall the game is an alright but with a few improvements it could be great so i am going to give it an 8/10

After 100%-ing the game in a few hours, I can come to a varied set of conclusions about this piece. If you are completely new to these types of games, keep reading. If you aren't, scroll down a bit. (There's also a TL;DR for both types.)

First and foremost- if you think this is an eroge, it is not. It doesn't even have fanservice. Those of you are opposed to such AO content may now be able to give it a chance.

Secondly, if you've never played any visual novel before, and are on the fence about ever trying, this game may put you off. It complicates the traditional choice-making system by adding a light grind-based RPG combat system (whose difficulty just goes out the window once you command magic,) and a bar-filling "work" system wherein the character spends time coding for disposable income. Thus, if you want to not have to play rpg-lite on every playthrough, you may want to find other VNs.

That being said, this game's entire style leans towards what VNs can be found coming out of Japan. If you've played Magical Diary, Long Live the Queen, and Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, know that the whole feel of the game will be different, even if the genre is largely the same. If you like the style, then you'll like VNs in general.

So, for those of you who have never played VNs before, know that I recommend it, but be aware of the needless bar-filling.

---If you are new to these kinds of games, you can stop reading now. The rest is for people who have played a number of VNs before. Or be my guest and keep reading; I'm not your parent.

-Presentation: The art is good. It's clean and works well for its purpose. The characters are nicely done and the backgrounds are fine. Be aware there are only a handful of CGs, and no options to view them again from the main menu, as is traditional. The music is fine, if a bit repetitive, but provides the atmosphere needed to read in peace. Again, there isn't a jukebox to access from the main menu, but none of the music I remember liking so much to listen to it again. 7/10.

-Story: Listen, I'll be honest with you- this game skirted around a really awesome idea that it never brought to the forefront. To be fair, you may not even understand what I'm talking about until your second or third run through, but when you do, you'll also go "aww, man." Putting that aside, there are about five or six actual endings, not including the ones where you just "flip the switch" at the end and get different flavortext. There are two heroines (don't bother going for anyone else, even though they do have a subplot) and, interestingly enough, there are ~35 manga books you can read that give a backstory of a world with magic and the adventures of people within them. There is a single good twist that isn't give to you unless you understand it first - one of the gems in this piece for sure. Unfortunately, in one of the routes there is an antagonist that is never seen, and on top of that, the choices you make to complete it and save her can be largely paralled to just ignoring the bad guy entirely. In short, it's no KEY visual novel, but It does okay. 7/10 for one route, and 5/10 for the other. 6.5/10 for the backstory.

-Choice: There are only two heroines, so that limits your choices right there. Like most VNs this game has branching plot choices but after finishing the game for good I can tell you that they don't have as much of an effect on earning better endings. You'll actually find that leveling up in general is worthless past lv 4 because once you get magic you wreck faces sideways. In fact, combat is largely unnecessary; it is barely needed in one route and completely not in another. You'll also find moneymaking to be mostly unnecessary- at no point in the game are you forced to spend money, but you do need it to buy manga that gives you magic spells (which you should get). If you're on the way to a bad ending in the "no magic" route you'll get plenty of warning. In fact, getting a bad ending actually takes some serious neglect, not necessarily bad choices.

-In short, if you have a lot of experience with VNs and have a picture of Jun Maeda on your wall, you may want to pass this over.-----

TL;DR - Try the game if you're on the fence and have little or no experience with visual novels. Avoid it if this isn't your first time around the block.

I absolutely loved this game. The writing is very well done, there are a surplus of very varried endings, and there is very little about the game that is "tedious" which is common in visual novels. Overall it is officially one of my most favorite visual novels. I highly reccomend to anyone who enjoys manga, visual novels, life sims, or wants to try a great introduction into any of those game types.